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YouTube has always been a key platform for musicians and the promotion of musical talent across the internet. Amidst growing competition from other giant corporations like Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music, YouTube decided to up its game and enter the music streaming industry.
What does this mean for artists and what new opportunities can they get out of the new platform?
What is YouTube Music?
YouTube Music is a streaming platform that gives access to official song audio and videos in one single place. The service originally debuted at the end of 2015, but was turned down by users with negative experiences as a result of bugs and missing features that put an initial bad taste amidst its better performing competitors.
The project was relaunched in May 2018 and since then, Alphabet, the parent company of YouTube, continues to update and refine the service. As of 2021, the number of YouTube Music and Premium users has grown to 50 million. While this seems like an insignificant number compared to Spotify’s 165 million paid users, it is important to note that in 2020 there were only 20 million users.
Marketing Music on YouTube
According to a survey in Statista, it was found that 68% of the total U.S. population had used the video portal to watch music videos or listen to music. Because of this, Alphabet has upped its game when it realized that its most viewed videos related to music have been taken over by other big players like Amazon, Spotify, SoundCloud and Apple.
Now comes the question, how can artists use the platform to promote their music?
Grow your channel as an artist
This is where using the right marketing strategies and YouTube’s features come into play. The entire growth of a genre comes down to how anyone can market their work in a competitive market with thousands of talented musicians.
YouTube Music has the same algorithm as YouTube itself, where likes and dislikes can influence the algorithm of users’ search habits. Disliked videos in a specific niche would show up less often or can be completely excluded from someone’s playlist.
In order to see what people want to listen to most, a quick research on Google Trends can help identify which genre or style is the most popular in different weeks or months across specific regions around the world.
However, a more specific tool that is recommended is Google’s KeyWord Planner that can help identify catchy titles, or descriptions for your musical content and help identify people’s taste. Musical artists who are trying to make a name for themselves, can use these marketing tools to find their audiences on YouTube Music.
Finally, it is also important to keep an eye on competitors and what titles or names they give to their music. This can help in two ways. One is to find inspiration and secondly to try and copy their style (not their words.) Titles shouldn’t exceed the limit of 60 characters.
Why upload on YouTube’s music streaming platform?
When combined with other music streaming platforms, Youtube videos are still aggregating more views per month than all of the other streaming services combined! 46% of music streaming is down to YouTube, while 45% is accounted for by the combination of streams from other paid and free audio streaming services. Musical artists who have been pushing their content on various platforms have the chance to use Youtube’s growing audience hungry for entertainment.
How much can artists earn through YouTube Music’s ad revenue?
Another fun fact that makes the platform even more attractive is its payout. YouTube Musicians can earn up to $0.00676 per stream, which is slightly higher when compared to ad revenue coming from Spotify or Amazon Music. However some argue that this is influenced a lot by demographics, ad type and user behavior.
But the fact remains that musicians who get tens of thousands of streamers each month can build a noticeable passive income stream that can further help their musical careers.
Final Remarks for Artists
YouTube Music is one of the latest streaming platforms for musicians to upload their content and make a name for themselves. However its features are somewhat similar to its competitors. What makes it stand out is YouTube as a video sharing platform enjoyed by literally billions. Since music is a big part of these videos, musical artists can utilize this enormous market and upload their work by following the right marketing strategies to cater to streamers’ needs.
